Born and raised in Maryland, Anna Deavere Smith school years were marked by an awareness of race and integration. She began attending school as Baltimore began the process of school integration, and then attended Western High School in Baltimore, a renowned all-girls school. She attended Arcadia University (then known as Beaver College) to study acting. She then attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for her M.F.A. in Acting.
Smith's first professional foray into theatre was in acting, from Shakespeare to Brecht. Smith began identifying as Black, but casting directors struggled with naming her ethnicity--another factor in her dramatic examinations of race, ethnicity, and representation. She also acted in film and television, notably portraying Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing and Gloria in Nurse Jackie.
But Smith's impact in theatre and the arts has been in her pioneering work in verbatim theatre. Fires in the Mirror (1992) was her breakthrough success. The play assembled interviews from over 100 residents and witnesses of Crown Heights and the race riots of August 1991. Through monologues, Smith took on the personas of real people who had lived through the riots, capturing their interviews onstage in a one-woman show. She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. Fires in the Mirror was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993. The following year, Smith took on her most ambitious project to date: interviewing Los Angeles and California residents who had experienced the L.A. Riots following the acquittal of four white police officers who had beaten Rodney King, an African-American man. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 again won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. Smith was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and Best Actress in a Play.
In 2012, Smith founded the Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project, a call to action regarding the school to prison pipeline that youth in poverty experience. The show Notes From the Field recounts the stories of youth, parents, administrators, and teachers as they try to navigate a justice system that seems to punish teens for being poor. The show is still regularly performed today, through live shows and livestream productions.
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